HarveyH42

But isn't the waste from nuclear power what they use in nuclear bombs? The plants sort perform a dual function. Kind of why not so stable countries catch a lot of heat over developing nuclear power plants. If it were just an issue of poorly constructed and maintained plants, I'm sure the world would gladly step in and help build and train these people. Power plants would certainly improve a country's economic status, as they could start some industrial venture, produce something other than terrorists.

philba

Actually, there are a reasonable set of protocols for monitoring. If the developing country adheres to the protocols, there is no problem with them developing nuclear energy. The current spat with Iran is an example where they don't agree with the protocols.

philba

I agree that nuclear power is hard for the average person to completely separate from the weapons.

To be fair, nukes were used to end a war, not start one. A war that the nuking nation did not start and which would have lasted significantly longer with out them. Also a lot more people on both sides would have died in a conventional end of the war than actually died in the 2 nuclear attacks. People have conveniently forgotten that.

A lot more fear was generated by the MAD doctrine of the cold war superpowers. Nothing creates fear like the ability to destroy every living person on the planet 100 times over. Going to the brink of nuclear war during the Cuban missile crises didn't help much either. And the thought of a terrorist group gaining access to a nuke is a real nightmare scenario.

Thunderchild

as far as i know a nuclear bomb is a nuclear reaction out of control whereas in the reactor is it controlled. It's not exactly a thing to take lightly and as most people crave political power it is a dangerous energy source a nuclear bomb is no more than a reactor out of control and without contamination the concentration of that type of energy is what makes it so powerful just a few hundred Kg of material carries terrible power that unleashed in a split second is a bomb theres really no difference hence the security issues of nuclear power plants let them out of control and you have a bomb on your hands.

sure the attacks on hiroshima and nagasaki scared the sh!t out of the japs but well there was more to it than that although determined enough due to their size I think they could have been neutralized other ways, those bombings were also experimwents the americans didn't actually know the extent of the damage that would be caused and they specificly choose a town that had had no previous bombings so as to see the effect of just the nuke well that just goes to prove they had no idea what they were dealing with previous bombings or not it's obvious the damage done when a whole town is reduced to ashes in seconds of course the government wasted no time in sueing a scientist that wanted to leave the project working on the hydrogen nuke bomb (fusion versus previous fission) because of moral objections

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j.p.bill

To address concerns about using the old reactor rods as a source of material for bombs - that is not the case. Unless designed as a "breeder" reactor, a nuke has the uranium in the fuel rods enriched by a few percent. As we all know, the U235 is only .7% of uranium in nature (normally U238). The fission results in uranuim atoms splitting into lighter atoms. The excess binding energy comes off as the source for the thermal output that makes steam. Those fuel rods are useless as a source for making a bomb.

A breeder subjects the uranium to faster neutrons and actually transmutes the U238 into Pu240. A kindergartener could reliably tell the difference between the different reactors.

Anyway, the French have a design using pelletized fuel and helium as the working fluid. Helium can't pick up radioactivity (doesn't transmute into an isotope) and the reactor goes dead if the cooling stops. Sounds pretty carbon-neutral to me. To hell with coal.

philba

I just saw this article on the deaths from air pollution in china. I presume that a significant percentage of this is from coal. http://www.ft.com/cms/s/8f40e248-28c...0779e2340.html

philba

It was an all out war. To say that they "experiemented" on the Japanese (please don't use the term Jap, it's considered offensive) is stretching what they did. yes, they chose the two cities because they were basically undamaged but I believe it was as much to let the Japanese know just how destructive the bombs were. The military pretty much knew how powerful the bombs were. Nuking Tokyo wouldn't have shown very much as it had been pretty well flattened any way. There was a lot of discussion by the inner circle about a demonstration by nuking Mt Fuji. However, they really only had 2 bombs (one Uranium and one Plutonium). If the Japanese leaders failed to surrender after the demo, the allies would have been stuck with only one. History showed that it took 2 cities destroyed to get them to surrender. I suppose we can argue what-ifs but it ended the war.

Thunderchild

well whatever but I think here and today we can agree that nuclear weapons are a no no if we were to have a nuclear war the world would no longer exist after a week or less and having it all over the place as power plants can be very dangerous the next thing we know every power station is going to be a terrorist target now with having to employ a second army to protect our power plants that will be very costly energy, not to mention that if power plants are targeted we will be in bother that certainly will freeze countries

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HarveyH42

And so many people think Bush's war on terror is a huge mistake... Doing nothing seems like a much bigger one.

upand_at_them

I think most people realize that the "war on terror" isn't even that, since he's not going after the people actually involved in the 9/11 acts and wanted to circumvent the weapons inspections and he actually let 9/11 happen by ignoring key intelligence. It's more of a war on our economy and foreign relations.

HarveyH42

Seems to me that Iraq is right in the middle of the terrorism problem. May not have been home to the terrorist, or had anything to do with 9/11. It is convienently located, and Sadam wasn't a great, human leader, or honaring his previous inspection agreement. Just consider the number of daily suicide bombings in Iraq (you'd think they'd eventually run out of volunteers...). I think Iraq was chosen, because it divides the the middle east region in half, and most of the neighbors were agreeable to the invasion (or atleast not willing to jump in and save Sadam's butt).

There is always a lot of opposition to war, and it limits the level involvement. Here, the democrats are fight against war funding, want to cut and run. It's mostly a political move, election next year. Many of the other countries that have sent troops, have cut back or withdrawn altogether. Tony Blair just stepped down, kind of think the UK is about to step out of it too, but after last weeks London car bombs...

I don't know what specific intelligence the White House ignored before 9/11, that allowed it to happen, imagine there were dozen of similar type reports on the desk. How do you decide which are crediable, how clear a specific was the warning? If it were so simple, the terrorist would only need to advertise any such plot to cause panic and terror, whether they were prepared to carry the out or not. It's a lot easy to look back after the fact, and see how something might have been prevented (we get this at work too often, but people still get injured...). Personally, I wouldn't have believed it before it actually happend. 20 guys going to comercial aviation school, with the sole purpose of learning to crash a jet into a building. I might have been more concerned if the targets were nuclear power plants, oil refineries, chemical processing and storage...

handbent

that article seems to be something that the author just winged with little to no facts on the subject. There are a lot of holes in the argument, and it seems a little rediculous.

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JTECH

I fully agree! In Brazil, the government supplies anyone interested and with agricultural property, CASTOR OIL SEEDS. They also provide full instructions on how and when to plant, harvest etc. They then promise to buy the end product. Castor oil is not worth much for anything else, but as the name suggests, it produces LOTS of oil, extremely suitable for use in bio-diesel production. This way, no-one can complain that plants intended for food, will be used to produce fuel.

TheVictim

That is a problem we are already starting to have with ethanol. Corn futures are going through the roof and food producers are feeling the crunch.

Using non-food crops as fuel would be a great idea.

Super_voip

Here's a story about biofuel to cheer you up, doesn't produce much fuel per plant but the input energy is also low
http://www.smh.com.au/news/National/...431695812.html